Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Arc Angel]

I was disappointed by the 1200, because I thought there would be a DSP and a faster CPU, as I could read in the mags.
But ...
I was also disappointed by the Falcon because it was rushed-in, and it wasn't that good anyway.
I was also disappointed to see that the entry level ARM250 based Archimedes ( the A3010 ), although 'cheap' in terms of usual Acorn pricing, and although it offered a 50% speed increase over the very 1st models, had no IDE port, offered no other improvements in terms of graphics and sound, and again wasn't sold worldwide.
I kept my gear, bought a second hand PC, and a few years later I bought a Pentium Windoz PC, added a 3DFX card and a Gravis Ultrasound soundboard.
I'm glad I now own these machines I didn't buy back in the days, but I don't regret my choice to have switched to the PC, as I really enjoy fast 3D gaming, and the PC was necessary for my university years anyway.

[zipper]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Nope. Thanks to MicroniK A500 tower kit you could've put A2k CPU card inside which means Blizzard 2060 was available for A500 long before Warp... albeit at radical system change and obviously expensive process. And again you did mention ACA500 which handles A1200 accelerators (although I'm not sure anyone did use e.g. Blizzard1260). ACA500 is over decade old now so even if you arbitrary rule Micronik Tower Kit out it still is an 060 option before vampires and warps. I think 060 feature level of V2 was around the launch of V4... FPU was added to the softcore only after V4 was released. In other words - I did burst your bubble with actual facts, it would be a good option for you to at least try to learn from your mistakes.

Exactly. That's what I did with my A500 instead of buying A1200. 2060 + PicassoIV, Picasso2+, CV64/3D - mostly CV as playing hw "accelerated" games. OK, Descent did accelerate somewhat on CV. 2060 clocked to 57/60 MHz. Didn't come cheap....

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

Commodore could have pre-configured "out-of-the-box" A1200 with 68LC040 at 25Mhz SKU for slightly above $779 (i.e. add 4MB fast ram, HDD) which could compete against $1000 486 33Mhz based PC and Apple's Macintosh Quadra 605.

LC040? No thanks.

Many Amiga fans were into raytracing, and the 68040 FPU was 3 times faster than the 80486 FPU. An 040 without FPU would be very disappointing - all the disadvantages of the 040 (incompatibility, heat) without the main benefit.

Commodore was paying US$8 for the 020 in the the A1200, and $170 for the 25MHz 040 in the A4000, a difference of $162 for the CPU alone. Then you need FastRAM. Commodore was paying $50 for 2MB ChipRAM in the A1200. A4000 2MB ChipRAM + 4MB FastRAM cost $186, equating to $136 for the 4MB FastRAM. So just for the CPU and RAM alone (not considering support chips, PCB area etc.) you're looking at ~$300 cost. Add $226 (all-up manufacturing cost of A1200) and you have an optimistic cost price of $526. Multiply by 2 to get to retail and it's the same price as that $1000 486 or Mac Quadra 605.

Personally I would still go for the Amiga at that price, but most wouldn't. Why not? Amiga isn't IBM compatible. Can't run Microsoft Word and Excel! Can't play Doom!

While the A1200 sold at US$399 it was attractive to those who couldn't afford a 486, especially when you factor in all those awesome games you could get for free. And you could expand it as you could afford and new tech came out - right up to today with 1200 mips PiStorm!

[sandruzzo]

@Bruce Abbott

2mb of fastram + 020 28mhz how mush could they cost?

[oscar_ates]

I would summarize this AGA discussion with copy paste from wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1200

"Although it is a significant upgrade, the A1200 did not sell as well as the 500 and proved to be Commodore's last lower-budget model before filing for bankruptcy in 1994. This is mainly because the 1200 failed to repeat the technological advantage over competitors like the first Amiga systems. The AGA chipset was something of a disappointment. Commodore had initially been working on a much-improved version of the original Amiga chipset, codenamed "AAA", but when development fell behind they rushed out the less-improved AGA, found on the A4000 and CD32 units. While AGA is not notably less capable than its competition, when compared to VGA and its emerging extensions, the Amiga no longer commanded the lead it had in earlier times."

It was a rushed, shoehorned design with a lot of shortcuts taken which resulted in many shortcomings on faster cpu, fast ram, chunky modes. At the end, it did not save the day.

I switched from A500 to A1200 and next a 030/50MHz accelerator because I liked my Amiga. Around 1998 it was super-dead so I switched to PS1. All the games released were PDs from non-professionals after 1995. There was not a single game that was a system seller like ones on other platforms Doom/PC, StarFox/NES. All the games looked like a little bit improved A500 games.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Personally I would still go for the Amiga at that price

So would I. The peecee sucked back then, even when it was more powerful.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Can't play Doom!

Yes you could. I played it on my A1200 in 1996 (give or take).

[grond]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Because area-filling and line drawing apparently works very different in chunky modes.



No, that's only a detail of the copper initialization from two RastInfos instead of one and thus relatively harmless. With chunky, however, a lot of drawing primitives change that do not change with dual playfield, as even very elementary assumptions are not true anymore. For example, computing the width of a bitmap. Or to give you a better estimate, look at how many functions P96 has to patch - all of these would have required a rework. Of course it's easy to say "that's all trival" as the work is done at this time, but if you look at the development time of P96, then that was all but trivial.

Wow, I literally replied to all your points before you even wrote your reply, you simply cut those bits. Just don't use line-drawing and fill modes on chunky displays. Use the chunky mode through hardware banging and not through the OS. No problem left, you can still use the legacy blitter to blit on chunky screens.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes you could. I played it on my A1200 in 1996 (give or take).

Via ShapeShifter? For the Amiga version you would have to wait until December 1997 at the earliest when the source code was released, 4 years after the PC had it.

But we should also remember that Doom was released on the PC in December 1993. At this point the A1200 had already been on sale for a year. Anyone who bought one then knew (or should have known) what they were getting for their $399. Expecting it to play Doom without a CPU and memory upgrade was illogical (but when did that ever stop an Amiga fan from whining?).

The peecee sucked back then, even when it was more powerful.

True, but everybody in the PC world was in the same boat - and since the PC was their whole world they didn't know any different. And it didn't matter anyway. The important thing was that it ran PC software - so you'd be an idiot to buy anything else! Doom proved they were right.

Imagine if John Carmack had had enough money to buy an Amiga instead of renting a PC to start his programming career. If he had developed Doom on the Amiga first that would at least be one thing we couldn't be disappointed about.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

True, but everybody in the PC world was in the same boat - and since the PC was their whole world they didn't know any different.

The arrogance of stating that there actually was something like "PC world", in which the dumb drones were completely oblivious to the wonders of Amiga and everything else, is simply astonishing.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

And it didn't matter anyway. The important thing was that it ran PC software - so you'd be an idiot to buy anything else! Doom proved they were right.

Not to forget the arrogance of stating that somehow it's wrong that people might want to use the most popular, standard-setting productivity software, and/or play the latest games.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Imagine if John Carmack had had enough money to buy an Amiga instead of renting a PC to start his programming career. If he had developed Doom on the Amiga first that would at least be one thing we couldn't be disappointed about.

Imagine the real bubble you have to live in to think that Doom was the only game people cared about (aside from the fact that perhaps Mr.Carmack was motivated more by the size of user base - 80 vs 3% circa 1991 - than platform cost).

Here's a link to help you understand how vacuousthis obsession is. It's the list of most popular PC games from between 1989 and 1994 containing numerous genre-defining releases such as X-Wing, AitD, Ultima Underworld 2, LBA, Commanche, Magic Carpet, Under The Killing Moon, plus numerous other high-profile blockbusters such as Lands of Lore, Sam & Max, Gabriel Knight, etc.

Yeah, this is the "PC world" any sane computer gamer wanted to live in, but not because they were too blinkered to see THE ONLY TRUE WAY but precisely because they could see what a dead end Amiga was becoming. Yep, Thorham, it's cool'n all you could play Doom on Amiga in 1996, but at the same time the rest of the world was into Quake, System Shock, D3D and a bunch of other insignificant titles.

.......

this is getting too boneheaded and not fun anymore - there's a surprise - so it's time to hit the eject button and take one of my periodic time-outs from this thread. But I'm pretty sure that when I check up on it again in 6 months or so it'll still be the usual suspects preaching the same ol' sermons

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grond

Use the chunky mode through hardware banging and not through the OS. No problem left, you can still use the legacy blitter to blit on chunky screens.

Yes. Commodore could have bolted a chunky mode on with limited OS support and it would have been fine. Chunky mode was only a big advantage for texture mapped 3D games, so lacking full support for it in the OS wasn't a big deal. HAM mode had similar restrictions.

But would it have been much more than a marketing stunt? "The A1200 couldn't run Doom because it didn't have chunky mode" is a lie. You needed at least a 40MHz 030 with 4MB FastRAM to even consider it, and John Carmack didn't think even think a 25Mhz 040 was enough to do it justice (the NextCube machine he developed it on could only manage single digit frame rates in 4 colors), and once you have that CPU power the C2P routine approaches copy speed.

[HornBeamSoft]

I made 14 MHz 68020 cycle exact configuration with graphics card for WinUAE.
Adoom is playable on this. Low detail, two degree lesser than full screen in 320x200.
It is really nice. It looks like DOOM on 386.
So "The A1200 couldn't run Doom because it didn't have chunky mode" is truth.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

The arrogance of stating that there actually was something like "PC world", in which the dumb drones were completely oblivious to the wonders of Amiga and everything else, is simply astonishing.

'Arrogance'? I'm just stating a fact. As far as the mainstream personal computer industry was concerned the Amiga wasn't even worth thinking about - in the same way that the Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes etc. weren't worth their attention. Totally foreign architecture and OS produced by a single manufacturer with an uncertain future - and they were totally right to ignore it.

You could say PC users were missing out on a wonderful machine and I would agree with you, but that was irrelevant. Sure PCs were often a pain to get games running on properly, but that was just a part of the process (and would get better in the future).

Even in its heyday the Amiga was only a niche hobby computer. I had no problem with that. I did extol its benefits to home users, but the day Commodore went bankrupt was the day I gave up. I still used and supported them as much as possible in my shop, but I couldn't honestly recommend an Amiga to anyone.

Not to forget the arrogance of stating that somehow it's wrong that people might want to use the most popular, standard-setting productivity software, and/or play the latest games.

Did I say that? No. In fact that's exactly the point I am making - people bought PCs to play the latest games which were coming out on PCs. Why would they even consider an Amiga when it couldn't run the games they wanted to play?

All the Amiga fans who cry about how Commodore should have put this or that in the A1200 ignore the fact that even they did it still wouldn't have attracted many PC games to it. The Amiga didn't have sufficient market share and that would only get worse as PC adoption rose exponentially.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Yep, Thorham, it's cool'n all you could play Doom on Amiga in 1996, but at the same time the rest of the world was into Quake, System Shock, D3D and a bunch of other insignificant titles.

So what I didn't give a single shit about that back then. Peecees sucked and I'm glad I stayed with the Amiga as long as I did (2004/2005). If you think that's insane then that's fine with me. As a hobbyist I just don't care

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by HornBeamSoft

I made 14 MHz 68020 cycle exact configuration with graphics card for WinUAE.
Adoom is playable on this. Low detail, two degree lesser than full screen in 320x200.
It is really nice. It looks like DOOM on 386.
So "The A1200 couldn't run Doom because it didn't have chunky mode" is truth.

Invalid test. This is what I hate about emulators today. You can't trust them to give relevant results compared to period hardware.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by grond

Wow, I literally replied to all your points before you even wrote your reply, you simply cut those bits. Just don't use line-drawing and fill modes on chunky displays. Use the chunky mode through hardware banging and not through the OS. No problem left, you can still use the legacy blitter to blit on chunky screens.

Wow, you propose a mode the Os could not support at this time? Seriously? I fully understand why CBM did not go that route.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by HornBeamSoft

So "The A1200 couldn't run Doom because it didn't have chunky mode" is truth.

[freehand]

Originally Posted by Thorham

So what I didn't give a single shit about that back then. Peecees sucked and I'm glad I stayed with the Amiga as long as I did (2004/2005). If you think that's insane then that's fine with me. As a hobbyist I just don't care

It's hard to believe your 47 years old.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by freehand

It's hard to believe your 47 years old.

That's fine with me

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

list of most popular PC games from between 1989 and 1994 containing numerous genre-defining releases such as X-Wing, AitD, Ultima Underworld 2, LBA, Commanche, Magic Carpet, Under The Killing Moon, plus numerous other high-profile blockbusters such as Lands of Lore, Sam & Max, Gabriel Knight, etc.

I didn't play any of those games on the PC. But I did play Wolf 3D and Doom - to test PCs I was repairing. Despite being the most popular PC game of the day Doom didn't excite me. However one day I was tasked with getting Tomb Raider running properly on a PC - and I was hooked! Soon after that I bought a Sony PlayStation just to run that one game.

Recently I have come to appreciate Doom more - not the original but DoomAttack, which adds mouse look. Finally Doom the way it should have been! It still doesn't have the depth of other games that took up most of my play time though. For me it has about the same staying power as Microsoft Solitaire or Astrosmash on the Mattel Aquarius.

Yeah, this is the "PC world" any sane computer gamer wanted to live in, but not because they were too blinkered to see THE ONLY TRUE WAY but precisely because they could see what a dead end Amiga was becoming. Yep, Thorham, it's cool'n all you could play Doom on Amiga in 1996, but at the same time the rest of the world was into Quake, System Shock, D3D and a bunch of other insignificant titles.

And that's exactly the obnoxious attitude a lot of PC gamers had that annoyed us so much. One would thought after 30 years they would leave us alone.

I paid big money to run Quake on my A3000 and what a disappointment! Then I did the same thing on the PlayStation II. That was the last time I bought a game based on what 'sane' gamers were playing.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

That was the last time I bought a game based on what 'sane' gamers were playing.

The only thing that's sane in hobby land is doing what you enjoy